A report calling for the NHS workforce to be cut by 137,000 in order to save £20bn has been rejected by ministers.

The McKinsey and Company report, which has been leaked to the Health Service Journal (HSJ), said cuts should include frontline jobs as well as administrative roles and was shown to the Department of Health in March.

As well as the 10 per cent cut in staffing, consultants also recommended that there should be a recruitment freeze staring in the next two years, a reduction in medical school places from October and an early retirement programme for older GPs and community nurses in order to make way for "new blood/talent".

Health minister Mike O'Brien said the government would be looking for efficiency savings but denied there would be job cuts.

"Ministers have rejected the suggested proposals in the McKinsey report and there are no plans to adopt these proposals in the future," he said.

"The government does not believe the right answer to improving the NHS now or in the future is to cut the NHS workforce. In core frontline services like maternity, nursing and primary care we need more staff rather than fewer."

But shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley has accused the government of "failing to be straight with the British people" by backing the NHS publicly and "drawing up secret plans for swingeing cuts".

Lansley added: "Clearly, we need to get better value for money from the NHS, so we applaud any drive for greater efficiency, but it is extraordinary that Labour plan to take an axe to the hospital budget rather than to the bloated health bureaucracy.

"Only a fifth of job cuts would be within the bureaucracy, meaning the vast majority to go would be frontline NHS staff."

Royal College of Nursing chief executive Peter Carter said calls for community nurses to retire showed a "very poor understanding" of the health service and warned that frontline cuts could result in patient deaths.

"These proposals are deeply worrying because recent studies show that there is a direct link between the number of nurses working on wards and patient deaths," he added.

"When there are not enough nurses on the ward, patients are more likely to die or experience complications. It is reckless to think about reducing staff levels without considering in detail the impact on patient care."